No answers at 86 feet

Friday

Feb 8, 2013 at 12:01 AM

LINDEN - FBI agents made a tactical change Thursday in their approach to excavating an old Linden well believed to hold at least one murder victim buried there by killers Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog.

Scott Smith

LINDEN - FBI agents made a tactical change Thursday in their approach to excavating an old Linden well believed to hold at least one murder victim buried there by killers Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog.

They've narrowed their work to the 5-foot diameter of the original hand-dug well, rather than laboriously excavating a 10-foot-wide hole around it, having to pierce through cement-like native clay and sandstone.

Work has taken them 86 feet down with no sign so far of human remains in the well filled in 25 or more years ago, FBI spokeswoman Gina Swankie said.

Thursday marked one month since the FBI began work at the new Flood Road location. Today is one year since the San Joaquin County Sheriff's deputies began excavating at a nearby well, where they found the remains of three women and a fetus.

Shermantine and Herzog led a 15-year drug-fueled killing spree until their arrests in 1999. Shermantine was sentenced to death. His tips reopened the case early last year, about the same time Herzog hanged himself while released on parole.

The FBI's secrecy about what led them to that corner of a cattle ranch in the rolling hills of eastern San Joaquin County continues to spark rampant speculation and criticism by those close to the case.

Retired FBI agent Jeff Rinek, who works with victims' families and has no communication with active agents on the ground in Linden, said Shermantine showed them where to dig in August, and this new location is not one of the places.

Rinek believes the FBI should use the killer's information and either prove him right, giving the victims' families relief, or prove him wrong, allowing the families to forever ignore his taunts.

"I don't have a clue as to their methodology," he said of the FBI.

Rinek was highly critical of the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office last year using heavy equipment, which he blamed for shattering bones in the well into 1,000 fragments. He credited the FBI now with mounting a professional excavation, treating potential victims with "respect and honor."

Bounty hunter Rob Dick, who has actively searched for the Shermantine-Herzog victims for 13 years, said he has talked with Shermantine and heard his frustration over the dig site.

Dick believes that the FBI's secret source leading them there may be Herzog's widow, Christina Herzog, who goes by the nickname Sugar. Shermantine often calls Dick.

Dick's bounty-hunting partner, Leonard Padilla, has yet another theory. Padilla has offered Shermantine money, which reopened the long-cold case. Padilla believes Herzog didn't hang himself and the FBI put him in a witness relocation program.

"I believe that Loren ... is steering them to the location," said Padilla. "The FBI did not decide to dig that well in a vacuum."

Padilla maintains this position, even after seeing Herzog's autopsy photos and reading the coroner's report.

Swankie, the FBI spokeswoman, declined to address any of these theories. She said that the current team will continue its work until agents fully excavate the well to its original bottom at a depth that also remains a mystery.